Satellite, cable & digital

Pick of the day

The L Word 10pm, LivingTV The first-ever lesbian drama series never cracks under the responsibility of representation. Unpalatable issues aren't avoided and characters have the freedom to be unkind. Only stereotypes are actively shunned - out go the dungarees, hairy armpits and earnest politics, in come catwalk collections, Brazilian waxes and irony. A cultish cast (including Pam Grier and Jennifer Beals) is supported by equally interesting special guests who are put to good narrative use: Sandra Bernhard as Jenny's caustic writing teacher, and Jane Lynch (from the hilarious Best in Show) as Tina's new high-powered lawyer. Clare Birchall

Films

Girl With a Pearl Earring (Peter Webber, 2003) 8pm, Sky Movies 2 Never mind the mystery of Mona Lisa's smile; what's that Girl With a Pearl Earring by Vermeer all about? In Webber's version of Tracy Chevalier's rich novel, it's all about the painter's fascination with housemaid Griet. Colin Firth broods around the place, daubing away in a tightly repressed, puritanical 17-century Holland, while Scarlett Johansson is spellbinding as his lowly muse. She, and cinematographer Eduardo Serra's Vermeer-like studies, bring outstanding qualities to what might have been a slightly laboured costume drama.

Betty Blue (Jean-Jacques Beineix, 1986) 10pm, Sky Cinema 1 Béatrice Dalle was apparently plucked from the streets of Paris to play the eponymous heroine, and it's an exuberant performance, by turns sexy, joyful and disturbing. Her Betty is an elemental force moving in on unsuspecting writer Jean-Hugues Anglade, and championing his unpublished novel; he is charmed, but soon horrified by her self-destructive intensity. Like Beineix's Diva, this is archetypal cinéma du look - an exercise in pure, seductive style.

Witchfinder General (Michael Reeves, 1968) 12midnight, FilmFour A minor masterpiece of horror, with Vincent Price in his greatest incarnation of evil. He plays Matthew Hopkins, lawyer turned infamous witchfinder in the desperate civil war-torn England of 1645. Ian Ogilvy is the trooper trying to rescue his girlfriend (Hilary Dwyer) from his clutches. Filmed on location in Suffolk, it brilliantly evokes a period of chaos and violence; third and last of Reeves's films, who died aged 25.

The Truce (Francesco Rosi, 1996) 1.25am, FilmFour For the survivors of Auschwitz, freedom was almost as terrifying as the camp. This is the story of the novelist Primo Levi's long journey home to Italy, via Russia. Levi is played by John Turturro, wearing the haunted eyes of the Holocaust's most famous witness ("If Auschwitz exists, then God cannot exist"), and an almost otherworldly wonder as he slowly rediscovers his humanity. A restrained but deeply moving film, which Rosi struggled for six years to make. Paul Howlett